This blog exists purely as a place for me to dump random links and thoughts I have rather than emailing them to my friends. It'll have large amounts of inside jokes. Also there will probably be times when I write "you" or refer to an email. Just pretend that you are reading an email to you. If you don't know me you likely won't find anything here interesting. If you do know me you also will not find anything here interesting.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Mailinator Inbox Generator

Yesterday, I wrote about Mailinator. This was spurred by my writing a simple page to help generate random Mailinator inboxes.

Mailinator is super useful for websites that force you to register just to see content. Usually I just use the same simple username/pass combo on all these. Sometimes, that is already taken so I have to use a random one. The mailinator homepage gives a random inbox name, but it's annoying to select it, and to select just the username part. I made a page that uses the 1000 most common first and last names and generates a random combo and gives all the fields you would need to register in easy to copy fashion.

Some notes: It generates the password based on the md5 hash of the username, limited to whatever password requirements you give it. Nice for sites that force digits or upper case letters. It also means you can find the password in the future if you need it by recalculating the md5 hash yourself. If you find out the requirements after putting in the other info you can change the parameters without it updating new random info.

There is also a checkbox to add a random 3 digit number to the end of the usernames. This is nice for sites where every username is taken. I tested the gmail registration and every single combo given was taken, none of the ones with random numbers were though.

It also gives an alternative domain to use if mailinator.com is blocked. If the alternative is blocked as well it lets you get another one without changing all the other info.